Microsoft dents, but doesn’t kill, Milo rumours

A Microsoft executive has issued a prompt statement in the hope to correct his previous claim that Lionhead’s Milo project has no plan for market release.

Yet in what is believed to be a retraction statement, Xbox Live Group Manager Aaron Greenberg has still left questions hanging over the key Lionhead title.

Network station ABC on Monday broadcast an interview with Greenberg, which quoted him saying: “Milo is a technology demo that continues to exist, but right now it’s not a game that we’re planning to bring to market.”

The specificity of Greenberg’s comment – to refer to the key Lionhead project as a ‘tech demo’ with no commercial plans ahead of it – had too much bearing for any of Microsoft’s PR teams to contradict.

That duty fell to Greenberg himself, who published a comment on his verified Twitter account, which read: “Project Milo absolutely continues in development at Lionhead Studios, it is just not a product we plan to bring to market this holiday.”

He also sent a similar statement to news site Kotaku, which added: “The team at Lionhead has always been a center of innovation and will continue to deliver against that charter.”

However Greenberg failed to address his previous claim that Milo was a tech demo and, in the play-by-inches world of corporate PR, only inferred that Milo would be released as a commercial title at some point after 2011.

In a more straightforward move to emphasise that the Milo project hasn’t been subjected to a severe change of policy, Lionhead community liaison officer Sam Van Tilburgh told Joystiq: “There’s about 50 people [who are currently working] on the Project Milo Team”.

The reaction to Greenberg’s initial claim comes as Frontier Developments founder David Braben clarified a seperate report suggesting a technological link to Milo and the studios’ own game, Kinectimals.